1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method and a system designed to allow customers of a copier, printer, or office products dealer to click a link and download an application, or load the application from a portable external storage device, that would automatically initiate an asset discovery and generate a baseline of the life meters for copiers, printers and MFP devices.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior to this invention, an onsite visit would be necessary to retrieve life meters for copiers, printers and MFP devices.
In order to determine the number of copies printed by a copier or a printer, some printer manufacturers or dealers requested their customers to report telephonically the number of copies indicated on a counter. However, said information needs to be controlled by one or more visits to the customers.
According to another development, the customer has to manually download an application, installs it on his computer, initiates a discovery, and then sends back the results. This method is cumbersome and required a lot of end user interaction, not to mention a base understanding of many processes.
EP 859 309 (European patent designating DE, FR and GB) relates to a system for providing peripheral device status information to workstations on a network. Said patent claims a computer network system comprising:                a network (wire, fiber or wireless)        a plurality of workstations        a first general purpose computer, and        peripheral devices, such as intelligent printers, fax machines, etc., i.e. device capable of relaying information concerning its current status via a communications line.The first computer and the peripheral devices are coupled to each other by the network.        
The first computer is provided with a software for storing device status information into a device status file, while the first and second peripheral devices include software for determining information concerning the current device status and communicating the same to the first computer via the network periodically or at least when their status is changed to store the same in the device status file. The plurality of workstations include software for requesting the device status information stored in the device status file, receiving the device status information and displaying the device status information (such as of the paper bins, ink supply, etc.).
This system enables to a customer to have an internal control of the current status of his intelligent peripheral devices. However, said information need thereafter to be communicated to the ink provider, paper provider, etc by the local manager.
WO 02/039246 (the corresponding European patent application is deemed withdrawn, while the corresponding US application is still pending. A UK corresponding patent GB2385973 has been granted.) relates to system and method for remote management of local area network printing device. The system disclosed in said document comprises:
a workstation with one or more computers,                one or more printing devices connected to at least one computer in the workstation; and        a remote diagnostic center configured to communicate with one or more printing device and execute a printing device management application to obtain data's from the one or more printing devices.        
According to said document, the remote system is located outside the workstation computer, said diagnostic center comprising advantageously a printer information management system communicating with the workstation through the internet. The printer information management system is stored on an Internet website, advantageously accessible by two or more concurrent users. Preferably, the remote diagnostic center is configured to obtain diagnostic data's only after receiving authorization from a workstation computer.
In the embodiment of FIG. 1 of said document, the local area network is connected to the customer ISP server adapted for establishing the internet connection with the remote diagnostic center server.
The system of WO 02/039246 is not adapted for sending alert message to one or more selected managers or persons when new printing papers, ink jet cartridges or other consumables have to be ordered and/or replaced.
The system and method of the present invention is a system or method using a remote management system analyzing at least one data from one or more printing devices so as to establish status report accessible from the remote management system by the customer.
The remote management system of the invention is suitable for determining initial asset discovery by analyzing the existing devices and alternating consumables or hardware replacements, and possibly, but advantageously for performing a second discovery on a future date and comparing the differences in meters, the volumes are extracted for that period of time.
According to an embodiment, the remote management system comprises instructions so as to determine with further information, a cost-per-page and total-cost-of-ownership, possibly along with the return-on-investment (cost savings) if the alternate consumables and/or hardware are rolled out.
The invention relates also to a software and an electronic support with instructions for determining said initial asset discovery, as well as advantageously second asset discovery.